Welcome! Step back into the virtual classroom and make yourself comfortable. We’re going to talk about how to really level up your lessons.
You just learned how to turn your high-level outline into a first draft by breaking your pillar points into a series of supporting beats or sub-points.
Following that process should result in a rough lesson script or slide deck with everything your average student needs to know to achieve the learning outcome.
But I want you to go beyond making a lesson that’s merely functional.
What Levelling Up Looks Like
Now, I don’t know about you, but my favourite teachers at schools were those who managed to make the lessons interesting, even fun.
Hundreds of schools taught the same curriculum, so what made one teacher tedious and another terrific came down to how they brought the material to life. It was what they added to the compulsory content.
In the virtual classroom, keeping your students engaged is even more important. While it takes a bold student to walk out of a traditional lesson, in the online world, people don’t have to storm out - they can simply log out.
(And no one’s going to tell their parents either.)
So how can you be the teacher whose lessons students actually look forward to, instead of the one people will do anything to avoid?
I’ve got six lesson-boosting “additives” you can use to enhance your first draft. Let’s meet them…
1) Examples
“Can you give me an example?” is such a natural thing to ask if you don’t understand something. That’s why I think of examples as a kind of instructional power supplement.
Examples come in a couple of different flavours: invented and real-world.
An invented example could be a fictional person or situation designed to help you illustrate a particular point.
So if your course teaches people about financial planning you might invent someone called Bob who’s 40 years old, earns 60,000 per year and wants to retire at age 55.
A real-world example, on the other hand, is either drawn from personal experience or surfaced by some factual research.
So if you were teaching people how to build their following on social media using a particular strategy, you could give an example of a real person who’s actually used that strategy successfully.
(By the way, counterexamples are useful too as they show people what not to do.)
2) Analogies
Analogies are a great way to convey an idea quickly and elegantly by “piggybacking” other concepts that your students already understand.
For instance, at school I remember learning about electricity and being taught that circuits work a little like water pipes. The water is like the electrical current, the pipes are like the electrical wires.
A narrower pipe offers more resistance to the flow of water, just like a thinner wire offers more resistance to the flow of electricity.
Of course, they’re not the same thing, but they’re similar in enough of the right ways for the analogy to be useful.
Dreaming up analogies takes time. But, if you can find the right one for your situation, it can cut quickly through a complex idea.
3) Visuals
The next additive is the visual, or graphic.
Yes, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a well-worn cliché, but a carefully-chosen picture or diagram can do wonders for bringing important ideas into sharp focus.
For example:
- A mind map is great for breaking a topic down into related sub-topics
- A flowchart is a brilliant way to illustrate the steps and decision points in a process
- A visual timeline is the perfect way to show people what they should expect to happen and when
- A screenshot shows people exactly what they should see on their screen when using a recommended website or app
You don’t need to be an artistic genius to get good results. Let modern tools and templates do the heavy lifting and you’ll do just fine.
4) Data
Data is our next lesson additive.
I’m talking of course about numbers, statistics, charts and so on.
Data is great for adding weight and credibility to your main points. We’ve all heard the phrase “the numbers don’t lie.” Even though most of us know that the numbers quite often do lie, we still place a lot of stock in data.
For example, it’s one thing to tell you that the blogosphere is crowded, but it’s quite another to say that more than four million new blog posts are published every day.
There’s no shortage of data to be found online; just make sure the source is reputable.
When adding data to your lessons you can let the numbers speak for themselves, or add your own analysis.
But unless your course is technical in nature, less is more when it comes to data. Sharing a quick, persuasive statistic is great, but diving too deep on the data can be a turn-off for some people.
5) Quotes
The next thing you can do to level up your lesson is to include a quote or two. Why? Because people love quotes!
For me they work best when they reinforce or resonate with some concept you’re sharing in your lesson.
You could quote an expert in your field or a related field who said something that’s directly relevant to the topic at hand.
Or you could throw the net wider and pick a quote that echoes the broader sentiment of what you’re saying.
If I’m trying to persuade you of the importance of research, I could share the following quote from Thomas Edison:
“A genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.”
There are many sites on the web that let you search for quotes from famous (and not-so-famous) people. Heck, you can even quote yourself if it helps to highlight an important point. ;)
6) Tips
Tips are my final additive.
And I’m not talking about tips that are the focus of lessons like “X Killer Tips for Doing Y” and so on.
I’m talking about extra tips you embed into your lessons. They’re more like nuggets of side coaching that you’ve prepared in advance.
So if a particular lesson explains a process, what optional but handy tips could you share as someone who’s already been through that process?
You could ask yourself:
- What quick advice would save students wasted time?
- What common pitfalls could you help them to avoid?
- What special circumstances might change their approach?
For example, when talking about creating course videos, I might give you the quick tip that the editing can be outsourced to a freelancer more cheaply than you might think.
Are You Ready to Level Up?
Once you’ve turned your outline into a rough script or slide deck, see which of these additives will help you take it to the next level.
You won’t need them all, and using too many will detract from your core points. A few well-chosen enhancements will make all the difference.
See you in the next lesson!